Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens

The Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens is a collection of 45 pieces of outdoor sculpture at the PepsiCo world headquarters in Purchase, New York. The collection includes work from major modern sculptors including Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, and Alexander Calder. The collection, which also features works by Henri Laurens, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Richard Erdman, Jean Dubuffet, Robert Davidson, and Claes Oldenburg, focuses on major 20th-century art. The sculpture "gardens" mostly consist of park-like landscaping, including lawns, trees, ponds, and fountains, as well as landscaped gardens with a topiary, tended hedges, flower beds and water-lily ponds. The sculpture collection is meant to "exist in harmony on approximately 168 acre of carefully tended landscape", according to a PepsiCo pamphlet about the gardens, and expansion of the collection occurred after the headquarters had been built and the gardens had begun to take shape. The gardens themselves were, in turn, designed with regard to the sculpture in the collection, and all were meant by the former PepsiCo chairman and founder of the gardens, Donald M. Kendall, to help create an atmosphere of "stability, creativity and experimentation that would reflect his vision of the company", according to the pamphlet. Kendall continued to be involved with the collection and the gardens after he stepped down as leader of the company.

The site, built partly on a former polo field, with the enormous, three-story headquarters building in the center, surrounded by bushes, vast lawns, streams on the east and west, gardens and bushes dispersed around the site, and a pond in the back. Parking (with separate lots for employees and visitors) is hidden behind trees, mostly on the east side. From above, the headquarters building is shaped like seven squares, connected by their corners and forming a cross with an inner cross-shaped courtyard, open at the north side (the front of the building, facing Anderson Hill Road). The building's square blocks rise from the ground "into low inverted ziggurats", according to the pamphlet, with each of the three floors having strips of dark windows topped by strips of tan-white concrete or stone. At the entrance, a long, straight drive leads up to the building. Where the courtyard meets the driveway, the PepsiCo corporate flag flies together with the flag of the United States. A strip of lawn and rows of trees extend down the open, north arm of the cross-like courtyard, ending in the center, where a large fountain with David Wynne's "Girl with a Dolphin" is surrounded by a wide paved area. The three closed arms each have sunken gardens with trees, bushes and, in the middle arm, a small pond, together with sculptures, none of which are monumental. Surrounding the building, and seen in distant vistas, are monumental sculptures and nearby gardens with small ponds. The vast south lawn allows the viewer to take in the full size of the structure, and the lower ground enhances the height of the building, an effect lessened on the north (entrance) side by trees and a more level approach.

The sculpture gardens have 45 works: • Judith Brown, "Caryatids" • Alexander Calder, "Hats Off" (Calder sited the piece in the park) • William Crovello, "Katana" • Robert Davidson: • "Frog" • "Totems" • Jean Dubuffet, "Kiosque l'evide" • Richard Erdman, "Passage" • Max Ernst, "Capricorn" • Alberto Giacometti: • "Large Standing Woman II" • "Large Standing Woman III" • Gideon Graetz, "Composition in Stainless Steel 1=No. 1" • Barbara Hepworth: • "Meridian" • "The Family of Man" • Henri Laurens • "Le Matin" • "Les Ondines" • Jacques Lipchitz, "Towards a New World" • Seymour Lipton: • "The Codex" • "The Wheel" • Aristide Maillol, "Marie" • Marino Marini, "Horse and Rider" • Joan Miró, "Personnage" • Henry Moore: • "Double Oval" • "Locking Piece" • "Reclining Figure" • "Sheep Piece" • Louise Nevelson, "Celebration II" • Isamu Noguchi, "Energy Void" • Claes Oldenburg, "Giant Trowel II" • Arnaldo Pomodoro • "Grande Disco" • "Triad" • Art Price, "Birds of Welcome" • Bret Price, "Big Scoop" • George Rickey, "Double L Excentric Gyratory II" • Auguste Rodin, "Eve" • Victor Salmones, "The Search" • George Segal, "Three People on Four Benches" (Seagal "likes the fact that people routinely plant big red lipstick kisses on the piece", a conservator at the garden said in 1991.) • Asmundur Sveinsson, "Through the Sound Barrier" • David Smith, "Cube Totem Seven and Six" • Tony Smith, "Duck" • Kenneth Snelson, "Mozart I" • Wendy Taylor, "Jester" • David Wynne: • "Dancer with a Bird" • "Girl on a Horse" • "Grizzly Bear" • "The Dancers" • "Girl with a Dolphin"